PY3102 Sixth Handout:
Supervenience: Facts about Ys (F2) supervene on facts about Xs (F1) iff it is impossible for F1 to obtain and F2 not. This makes F1 the base facts, F2 the supervening facts. [We can define the supervenience relation for properties and entities as well.]
The kind of supervenience relation involved depends on the kind of impossibility involved. Candidates are- logical, conceptual, natural impossibility. In moral contexts, it is usually taken to be conceptual impossibility we are after. It is conceptually impossible that an X be Y iff the meaning of ‘Y’ is such that it cannot be appropriately applied to Xs. For example, it is impossible for a dog to be a cat because the meaning of ‘dog’ is such that it cannot be applied to cats. McDowell is concerned with understanding the meanings of moral terms.
Sensibility-Theory:
A useful way of seeing the concern of sensibility-theorists is the concern to determine the base facts on which moral facts supervene. Mackie and the moral realists see the base facts independent of the responses involved in recognizing those facts. Sensibility theorists disagree. Moreover, s-theorists think that seeing the base facts as including facts about the world and facts about our responses helps defeat Mackie’s queerness argument. If their account is true:
1) It weakens the psychological queerness argument by connecting moral facts to motivating states (our reactions). Hence, it makes sense of the necessary connection between moral judgement and motivation.
2) For another, it weakens the ontological queerness argument. It is far easier for us to understand moral facts on analogy with other response-dependent facts than with facts that have nothing to do with our responses.
Response-Independent Concepts: These are concepts best understood as picking out facts that are in no way dependent on our senses, feelings, beliefs or desires. Examples: The length, width, location of an object.
Response-Dependent Concepts: These are concepts best understood as picking out facts whose existence depends in some way on our senses, feelings, beliefs or desires. [The properties picked out by these concepts sometimes said to be point-of-viewish.]
Examples:
a) The beauty of a piece of music depends on its being such as to be appreciated by persons. This appreciation involves aesthetic experience.
b) Whether something is red is such as to appear red to normal observers in normal circumstances.
c) X is good iff it is such as to merit certain responses on our part.
Circularity Problem: Is the account of goodness (or redness) circular? If so, is it viciously so?
The response-dependence account of goodness involves other evaluative terms, such as ‘merits.’ Does this make it circular? Let’s say that an account is circular if it characterises the meaning of X by appealing to Y, where an account of the meaning of Y would have to make reference to X. If this is true, the account seems circular. But is it viciously circular? It would be vicious only if the circle does not expand our understanding of either of the terms involved. McDowell claims that his account does. It expands our understanding of moral terms like ‘good.’
Direction of Explanation Problem:
Even if it is true that moral facts supervene on facts about the world and our responses, there are still two ways of understanding the relationship of these facts. Suppose we appropriately react to something:
1) Do we react as we do because world is such as to merit the reaction? This suggests stark raving realism.
2) Is the world such as to merit the reaction because we react in these ways? This suggests projectivism.
Realists clearly want the former to be true. If the latter is true, we may just end up projectivists- projecting our responses onto the world -> a job for attitudes- as opposed to responding to the world -> a job for beliefs. McDowell denies both directions of explanation. He says that neither our reactions nor the facts we are reacting to can be understood apart from each other. This means that they are both basic, and fit one another. He calls this the No Priority View.
Reporting vs. Expressing our Reactions: If McDowell’s story is correct, when we say ‘joe is kind,’ we mean that Joe is such as to merit the responses appropriate to kindness. Isn’t this reporting on our reactions to Joe, and so oddly self-conscious? Don’t we simply want to be reacting to Joe. Projectivists will be able to say that when we say ‘joe is kind’ we are expressing our reactions and not reporting on them. Is this difference important?
Causal vs. Normative Explanation: When we talk about redness, we are talking about properties that must be understood in terms of their causing certain responses. Hence, we can give a causal explanatory role to such properties. When we talk about kindness, however, we are talking about properties that must be understood in terms of their meriting certain responses. But the meriting-relation is not simply a causal-relation. They may be causal relations between moral facts and our moral responses, but these do not capture the crucial issue: those facts justify, rather than cause those reactions.